Category: Bad stats

(Thanks to the members of the My Husband Betty message boards for helpful feedback.)

Over many years of contemplating transgenderism, I’ve come up with a few principles that I’ve encountered over and over again. Principle One is “No one really knows what’s going on.” With so many closeted cross-dressers, stealth transsexuals, and people from all over the transgender spectra lying to themselves and to others, and lots of people who’d rather not hear about us, it’s very difficult to make any statements with confidence, or to believe any statements from anyone else.

Recently, there’s some good news and some bad news regarding Principle One. The good news is that there’s been an increase in funding for transgender research over the past few years. Much of this funding is in the form of locally based studies in the context of research on the transmission of AIDS. (I could write a whole article on the problems involved in that idea.) Social service organizations around the country have gotten grants to study their local transgender populations, and have gone out, found transgender people, asked them questions, and published the results. With the sometimes-generous support of the government and philanthropies, hard-working teams of investigators have collected large amounts of data, sometimes on only a small salary or even on a volunteer basis. Just do an Internet search for transgender study and you’ll find a bunch of them.

So what’s the bad news? Unfortunately, a lot of this time, effort and money have been wasted due to poor methodology. It really upsets me every time I read about one of these studies, because I want the same information that the study organizers want, and I know how caring and dedicated they are. I hate the idea that they could have taken all that money and left it in a pile for the clients of their walk-in clinic and probably done more good. Continue reading “Doing Transgender Research: Recognizing and Compensating for Limitations”